Read Akaela for Free Online Page B

step
in front of the elder, stretch my arms up and try to get my kitten back.
    “This cut
on his belly—” he says.
    “He got it
in a fight. I rescued him.”
    “Akaela!”
    I turn and
find Mom glaring at me in complete shock. She’ll
give me away, me and my stupid little lie to save Ash’s life .
I snatch the kitten away from the man’s hands and run. Uli catches me as I try
to flee and embraces me in his wide arms. I hide my face in his chest and sob.
    “Help me,
Uli! Please!”
    “It’s been
a rough day for all of us,” Uli says in his deep, reassuring voice. Ash can’t
breathe snuggled between my arms and Uli’s stomach, so I turn and let him climb
up on my arm. They are all staring at us—the people clustered along the hallway,
the Kiva Member still leaning on his crutch, and Mom, her face hung with
shock.  
    The Kiva
Member taps the floor with the tip of his crutch. “We need to keep going with
all battery checks,” he says. “This little incident is just making us waste
more time.”
    “Yes,
sir,” Uli replies. “Akaela didn’t mean any harm. The kitten—” He
swallows, squeezing my shoulders with his wide hands. “It’s just a temporary
thing. The cat was injured and Akaela rescued it. We will release him back into
the wild as soon as his wounds have healed.”
    The man’s
brows come together in a skeptical scowl. “You better,” he says, limping away. “Take
her to recharge.”
    “What?” I
yell, squirming. “No, I—”
    Uli covers
my mouth. “Hush!” he says. Mom’s face is a mess of worry, concern, and anger.
She comes over to take Ash from my arms. “Please don’t give him away,” I beg
her.
    “This has
gone far enough,” she hisses, staring straight into Uli’s eyes.
    Is she mad
at him for not speaking up about Ash’s implants?
    Ash mews
and claws the hooks of her prosthesis hand.
    Uli pushes
me over. “Come on, Akaela. You need to recharge, now .”
    And the
way he says “now,” I know I can’t disobey this time. We walk silently to Uli’s
workshop at the back, where five recharging stations are lined up—old
dental chairs revamped to fulfill their new purpose. Uli motions me to take a
seat and rolls over a cart carrying one of the TBCs—the transcutaneous battery
chargers.
    I climb
into the recharging chair, cross my arms, and refuse to lie down. “I don’t need
recharging,” I challenge. “Why are you all freaked out yet nobody wants to talk
about what happened to Skip?”
    “Skip is
the reason why we are doing this,” Uli replies, unwinding the cable from the
TBC.
    “But—“
    Mom leans
closer and puts a finger on my mouth, pain still fresh in her eyes. “That’s
enough, Akaela. Lie down and let Uli insert the USB port. The battery check is
mandatory. Everybody’s recharging and you are no different than everyone else.”
    I don’t
get this obsession over recharging. I can go two years without recharging and
I’m fine. I guess I use less Watts than other people. So what? I’m lucky that I
need less. Yet my parents still make me recharge every six months like
everybody else. I hate it. Most of all, I hate lying on the chair and being
deactivated.
    All Mayake
people come with a switch. It’s the price we pay for the life we couldn’t have
otherwise. We have transistors and nanowires and artificial immunity that
protect us from mutated bugs. And a built-in deactivation switch, a preventive
measure our fathers established after the Astraca incident in 2110, when a
handful of out-of-control A.I. units wrecked the city, killing thousands of people.
    Deactivation
switches became mandatory, as a safety measure should nanobots
spread virally inside our brains and turn us into killing machines. Now they’re
used when we need to recharge or as a punishment for crimes.
    Once the
switch is flipped, your body goes limp and your brain shuts down. It’s not like falling asleep, when you’re still free to move and your
mind wanders and